The Bengaluru police have registered an FIR in connection with a road rage incident involving the assault on a call centre employee. The altercation between Wing Commander Shiladitya Bose and a call centre employee, Vikas Kumar, took place on April 21, when Shiladitya and his wife Madhumita were on their way to the Kempegowda International Airport.
The police have not named Shiladitya as the accused and instead have registered a case against the male driver of the Maruti Suzuki car. However, in their complaint to the police on April 21, the couple had said that Shiladitya’s wife, Madhumita, was driving the car.
The accused has been booked under Sections 109 (attempt to murder), 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 304 (snatching), 324 (mischief) and 352 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The call centre employee, Vikas Kumar has also been booked under various sections of the BNS, including Sections 115 (2) (causing hurt) and 116 (h) (grievous hurt). Vikas was released on station bail on April 22.
Shiladitya posted a video claiming he had been attacked, and his face and neck were streaked with blood. Outrage quickly swelled over the alleged assault on a defence officer. Subsequent CCTV footage, however, showed Shiladitya striking Vikas Kumar multiple times, while onlookers repeatedly tried to pull him back.
Speaking to TNM, Vikas's mother, Jyoti, said that they did not want to file a complaint initially because they did not want the incident to blow out of proportion. But since the IAF officer had complained to the police, they too were compelled to defend themselves. "Isn't it wrong to blame my son when they made a mistake? As a commander, is it right to bite someone and beat them?" she asked.
The CCTV footage shows Shiladitya putting Vikas Kumar in a chokehold, punching him in the face, and hurling his phone to the ground in an apparent attempt to break it. In the video he recorded later, Shiladitya says he didn’t retaliate enough, but the visuals tell a different story.
Jyoti was at the Byappanahalli police station on the night of April 21, as Vikas had been arrested by the police. She said that the altercation began when the silencer of her son’s bike grazed the officer’s car. “The woman became angry and abused my son. He asked her what she said and questioned the husband. It was then that the husband got out of the car and pushed the bike down.”
She said that when her son tried to retrieve the bike, he was thrashed. “If someone beats you, won’t you retaliate?” she asked.
“Naming any road rage-related incident as a Kannada language issue has become a trend now. The visuals of this incident show clearly that Vikas was assaulted, but the officer has turned it into a language issue,” said Arun Javagal from Namma Nadu Namma Aalvike, a group of pro-Kannada activists. They have announced legal support for Vikas Kumar.
In the video he posted, Shiladitya had alleged that Vikas approached their car, banged on the door, and started hurling verbal abuses in Kannada. He alleged that the biker grew hostile after spotting the DRDO sticker on their vehicle and began targeting them for being part of the defence organisation.
“When they saw the DRDO sticker on the car, they said, ‘you DRDO people,’ and began abusing my wife,” Shiladitya said in the video. “This is what Karnataka has become; I believed in Karnataka… I couldn’t believe it. God help us,” he said in the video.
While the police are trying to determine exactly how the fight started, eyewitnesses say that they saw Shiladitya repeatedly hit and kick Vikas. “He must have hit him at least 30 times, and at one point, I thought the call centre person would die. Even if it was an accident, the officer should have shown some common sense and not done this. We tried to make him stop, but he just wouldn’t,” an eyewitness told Times Now.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated from the original version to reflect the contents of the FIR accurately.